THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS

How often have we heard it? It's an old excuse that few examine or even understand what they're saying. It's the statement, "I don't go to church because it's filled with hypocrites."

I've never heard the hypocrite argument used in connection with any meeting other than church. I've never heard anyone say, "I don't eat at McDonald's because its full of hypocrites," or "I don't go to football games because there are too many hypocrites in the stadium." Somehow the church has carried the full load of the hypocrite diatribe.

But, like I said, let's examine the statement by asking, "What is a hypocrite?" According to the New Testament Greek, it was a word used in show business to describe someone's playing a part on stage, that is, acting as if they're someone else. So the question is, is the church filled with people acting as if they were someone else?

Jesus' day saw its share of hypocrites, the Pharisees were playing the part of the godly, the good, and the righteous when they weren't. They were legalists and legalists by their very nature are hypocrites. So, yes, a church will have hypocrites in it, if it has legalists plaguing it.

But, let's think a bit more about this. Let's take a person who attends church regularly. Does his attendance make him a hypocrite? Of course not. A hypocrite is someone who plays a part and is pretending to be something he's not. But wait a minute, that church attender sins during the week, probably everyday, and yet there he is on Sunday, big as life. Isn't he a hypocrite? A person who attends church is not a hypocrite because he sins. If that were the case, then every last one of us would be a hypocrite, because we all sin. Sinning doesn't make the church attender a hypocrite.

Then what does? What makes the hypocrite is not the sins in his life; hypocrisy occurs when he pretends he doesn't sin and acts accordingly. The hypocrite will never admit he's a sinner or is sinning. Pretentious self-righteousness makes the hypocrite.

Is a church filled with sinners (and they all are) a church filled with hypocrites? Only if they're denying their status. Take a typical church. Unfortunately, when you look behind the curtain that is their Sunday service, you see a roiling cauldron of grudges, hatred, with one group plotting against another to gain the power and run the show. There's no business like show business.

In the Sunday service, the congregants are sitting there dressed to impress, pretending nothing untoward happened last Sunday at the business meeting, all the while knowing that someone stormed out of that meeting, someone slammed the door to emphasize their disgust as they left the meeting, someone called a secret meeting after the meeting, and that someone in the congregation did an anonymous mail-out accusing a deacon of malfeasance. They know that it was church business as most of theirs are, a meeting during which tempers flared, people found themselves under attack, and every minute of the meeting was filled with the snarls of the saints.

Yet, the Sunday services roll along, as the great pretenders sing and open their Bibles. As they turn their heads toward the pulpit, they have that sweet-saint smile. Yes, those people are "I'm-always-right-hypocrites." They are the great pretenders, pretending that nothing is wrong, nothing is broken. Each Sunday is show business, and there's no business like show business for them.

But in the church, there are those who bow before the Scriptures, humbly seeking a word from God, and with a healthy fear of the Lord, they see their sin without denying it, and like Isaiah, say, "Woe is me for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips.